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In Spokane, more than anywhere else I’ve been, it’s strangely popular to complain about how terrible the city is. I don’t really understand the sentiment, because I’m a firm believer that if you hate a place, you should leave. I, however, think this place is pretty cool. It has almost no traffic, all the city amenities close to outdoorsy pursuits, low cost of living, and a slowly burgeoning arts/culture/small business scene.

I’ve always been a fan of lifestyle writing, and particularly of regional magazines and the wide variety of topics they can cover: reviews, interviews, feature stories, hard news – as long as it’s related to that geographic area, it fits! I wanted to find a way to do this kind of “positive journalism” about Spokane, a place where too much of the discussion swings negative. However, the startup costs related to a real print publication are huge.

Podcasting, though … now there’s a type of media with low cost-of-entry. I already owned a laptop, and while the built-in speaker is low quality, it works. It takes a bit of legwork, but you can actually get your podcast on iTunes for free. With the Magic of the Internet, we could promote the podcast for free through social media. So we created the Riverside Voice.

I pulled in my friend Annie, knowing that this project would be way more fun and more likely to succeed if I had a co-producer/anchor. Every two weeks, we go do fun things and talk to cool people, then we talk about them on our podcast (you can listen on our blog or follow us on iTunes and also on Facebook!). We have about 20 subscribers, so clearly we’re The Next Big Thing.

The podcast has been an awesome project so far, and it’s fun to have a creative project outside of work, and even outside of my random money-making endeavors, like tutoring.

In 2015, I hope to bring on cool guests, up our subscriber base (to maybe include some people who aren’t already my friends), and find ways to engage the community. How to do that? I’m not sure, that’s the fun part!